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Ancient Hixtory
December 2020: Finally, A Real Circus! - Wrap-Up
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- Ronald Wencer
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Wrap-Up
I never was a rabid circus fan, but I usually enjoyed attending a circus. As a child, I saw the RBB&B circus a few times at the old Madison Square Garden . Although many parts of each performance were impressive, the most memorable aspect for me was the hour before the show.My father and I spent that time down in the menagerie, where I fed peanuts, one by one, to the elephants.I have never forgotten the touch of the elephants' trunks.They moved lightly over my extended palm, grasped the peanuts, lifted the peanuts to their mouths, and then gently returned, to search my palm for more.I would have been content to skip the circus itself, and instead spend all of my Saturday afternoon that way.I wondered why the circus didn't sell menagerie-only tickets.
My wife and I attended performances of later incarnations of the same circus, in MSG, and still later, in Buffalo and Toronto with our sons, and gradually I felt different about it.Much of it was still excellent, especially the clowns.But it seemed as if RBB&B thought that its circus talent lineup was insufficient, that the acts alone were not worth the price of an admission.It was as if the circus had to concoct something artificial to supplement the show's real talent.Truly difficult feats, like doing multiple somersaults in the air between trapezes, or having three motorcycle riders speed in different directions inside a spherical cage, were needlessly offset by prolonged, vapid spectacles.
Granted, circuses are inherently prone to excess, and they probably always have tried to augment their talent with rather chintzy eye candy.Shortly after World War II, however, John Ringling North, who then ran RBB&B, hired about sixty chorus girls, who became the core of the circus's new "aerial ballet" galas.Years later, when I saw the circus as an adult, there were bigger galas, with still more showgirls, all doing the one, simple "trick" they had been taught.Each of them had to hang from an ankle-hold on a rope, resting the sole of her other foot against the rope, while people on the ground anchored the ropes and slowly moved them in unison.
Aerial Ballet of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus,
Madison Square Garden , 1950s
NewYorkSocialDiary.com
For one professional performer to do this, and basically only this, would not be very interesting or remarkable.When sixty, or eighty, or more, do it at once, audiences instinctively applaud.Presumably, that's a response to the unison, which is due largely to the identical costumes, and to the movements of the guys holding the ropes.There's not an abundance of skill involved.As you can tell, I am not a fan of spectacle-centric circuses.
No, I'd rather look back to one evening in Hicksville , some time around 1959, when a small, truck-transported circus - its name is now forgotten - performed before a small audience in a tent on North Broadway, where the Sears later would be built.
The tent probably could hold only several hundred people.It was as dark as a movie theatre, with spotlights aimed at the one ring.If I had known the word back then, I might have said that it was intime.Even if you sat in the last row, you were close to the ring.The animals and performers probably did nothing unique, but as I remember it, whatever they attempted, they did well.It was fun.After the show, on the way out, I realized that everything smelled special.
Looking back, I think that that performance, with no glitz or grand production numbers, left one with a feeling that was as close as possible to what every circus should impart.
